[boblinds]

Guys:


Take a look at the Dell site. They have a 20 percent discount day going today, Oct. 17, only.


This puts their 64Mb Radeon 8500 video card at a few cents less than $204 and it includes free shipping.


A fairly good deal, I think...

 

[DIZ2]

Very good deal indeed. The cheapest I have seen it elsewhere is $213.00. Good eye.

Dan

 

[Ashley Saldanha]

Not that this will make a bit of difference to video, but people picking up the first OEMs are complaining rather loudly that they are clocked lower than the retail cards...

 

[Brett]

Thanks for the warning Ashley!


Does this mean that they have just a lower default setting and possibly not as good a heat sink - or, as one might fear - slower DDR speed?


TIA

 

[flashbak]

Boy, that's an understatement. Check out rage3d.com. It's getting nasty!

 

[Ashley Saldanha]

I haven't seen one of these lower-clocked OEMs myself, but I understand they have 3.6ns. memory on board - same as ATI's retail card.


It is not even clear if the OEM cards in question are manufactured by ATI or by other board manufacturers.


Like I said, its not going to make that much difference to HTPC enthusiasts, and even at 250/250 the cards are a good value and clocked *higher* than NVidia's top-of-the-line GeForce3 Ti500 (240/250).


Of course, the lower clock speed is stiriing up a storm on rage3d because people over there don't seem to do anything with their computers except run 3dmark.


(Note that I am using real clock speeds so if you are thinking in terms of DDR "effective" speeds, you need to multiply my numbers by 2.)

 

[Hugh Magoo]

I agree. If the higher clock speeds are what you want, just buy a current Radeon 64 DDR. These can be overclocked to 270/230 without much cooling enhancements. Of course the newer boards will allow you to go even higher, but that is only useful up to a certain point and when using certain softwares.


For HTPC video playback, you could underclock these cards take off the fan, and be happy.

 

[MKANET]

Does anybody know if the Radeon 8500's work with all new popular 3d games? The biggest headache I had with my old Rage Fury was it didn't work with all 3d games.

 

[xcel]

Hi Michael:


___It appears that most of the current top shelf games (Max Payne, Black and White, Serious Sam, Quake III, UnReal Tournament) are greatly compatible according to the reviews posted today but like I have seen with the Rage chipsets of the past and the Radeon’s afterwards, how does it display Star Wars Rogue Squadron? I know its ancient game but I fire it up about once a year and play it through till the end and yes, I still enjoy it immensely … Both of the previous ATI chipsets have been terrible with this game as to make it unplayable whereas the Nvidia TNT’s and GeForce 256’s all the way through the latest GeForce Titanium’s have done this display exactly as I would have expected … Performance wise, the 8500 appears to be almost GeForce3 Titanium capable but not quite … At least we will get the great DVD display and flight sim frame rates that will suffice rather than unplayable (unless you liked to be shot down a lot ) as I have seen with all of the Radeon’s of the past.


___Good Luck


___Wayne R. Gerdes

___Hunt Club Farms Landscaping Ltd.

___ [email protected]

 

[kyungkim]

as far as I know the dell boards are retail.
orginal anandtech hot deals discussion


They also seem to be pulled from dell's site. they must have racked up quite alot of orders.


Got 2 on the way, one from the original deal back from the 3rd and one from today. the disappointing benchmarks aside, i can still deal with this card if gives me gonzo pq and passable 3d. Its still an update from my ocd gts2 pro.


K

 

[CKL]

The one selling by Dell is OEM or original box set from ATI?